Council likely to vote Tuesday on opening Park Avenue

When the City Council meets Tuesday night for the first time in the 2011-12 fiscal year, it will make decisions on many items it considered for much of 2010-11.

A decision is expected concerning the council's next step toward opening Park Avenue through Herman Park more than two months after the council voted to remove the bollards that were erected in late 2010, closing the street without properly allowing the public to speak out on it.

A measure to reduce the speed limit of the section of the road that runs through Herman Park from 25 to 10 mph is on the consent agenda, along with site and landscape plans for a proposed Social Security administration building and a museum building requested by the Old Waynesborough Commission.

The council's consent agenda also contains a resolution requesting the North Carolina Department of Transportation to name the new U.S. Highway 70 Bypass over Wayne Memorial Drive after Goldsboro's four police officers who died on duty.

The sole public hearing of the meeting will be on the city's delaying and rescheduling of the 2011 municipal election. The redistricting maps, necessary because of population shifts revealed by last year's Census data, must be approved by the Department of Justice because of Wayne County's situation concerning the Voting Rights Act of 1965. To maintain the act's requirement of "one person, one vote," elections cannot be held until the districts are set, but a hearing must be held before a delay can be approved.

Other items the council will discuss include the approval of the redistricting of electoral districts, the demolition of the Golds Inn on Highway 70 East near Highway 117, the renovation of hole 14 at the city's municipal golf course and a budget amendment authorizing the Finance Department to purchase the building at 2406 E. Ash St. from the Arts Council of Wayne County. Discussions about the building have proposed locating an Air Force museum at the location.